Froot Loops are just as healthy as fruit

As the NYTimes reported on Friday, Froot Loops are a smart and sensible food choice according to the Smart Choices Program.  Well hey, forget that sugar is the dominating ingredient (it is listed first, which means that is the weightiest ingredient), since it has been reformulated to have 3g of fiber, let’s fuel all our kids on Toucan Sam’s treat!

What is the Smart Choices Program?

On face value, the Smart Choices Program seems like a good initiative — it aims to guide consumers who are “often strapped for time and [who] need to make choices quickly” towards “smarter food and beverage choices within product categories in every supermarket aisle.”  The check-mark symbol, and at-a-glance calorie and serving size information are supposed to help consumers glean information quickly.  And, in order to ease confusion between various brands’ labeling methods, it is a single, standardized method.  Also, the American Society for Nutrition is managing this program, and many nutrition professional associations are involved.  For example, Eileen T. Kennedy, dean of the reputable Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University,  is president of the Smart Choices board.

So, Wise Eats, what’s the problem with a nutritionist-backed program aimed at helping consumers make healthy choices?

The criteria used to determine “smart choices” was heavily-influenced by the big food industry so that their foods (like froot loops) would be deemed a “smart choice.”  Walter C. Willett, chairman of the nutrition department of the Harvard School of Public Health, says “these are horrible choices.”  He continues on to say:

[T]he criteria used by the Smart Choices Program were seriously flawed, allowing less healthy products, like sweet cereals and heavily salted packaged meals, to win its seal of approval. ‘It’s a blatant failure of this system and it makes it, I’m afraid, not credible,’ Mr. Willett said.

Great, let’s just confuse consumers even more!  On August 19th, 2009, the FDA and USDA sent a letter to the Smart Choices Program managers stating this worry.  They worried the criteria would  “encourag[e] consumers to choose highly processed foods and refined grains instead of fruits, vegetables and whole grains.”  Even the nutritionists and reputable members, like Michael Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, could not ultimately influence the Smart Choices program.  Big Food did.  Michael Jacobson quit serving on the panel that helped devise nutritional criteria last September.  He recalls:

“It was paid for by industry and when industry put down its foot and said this is what we’re doing, that was it, end of story.”

Wow.  I have talked about big food’s marketing tactics before, and how they are constantly seeking to sell their products.  Big Food companies do not actually care that obesity rates are rising.  They will do anything — even tell consumers that sugar-laden froot loops are a smart choice — to sell their products.

So when you see the symbol above, remember to think twice about who is actually guiding your food choices.

[Via http://wiseeats.wordpress.com]